taipei: a haibun

heavy, filthied silver and red panes run perpendicular to the slabs of city cement. christmas striped paths to lead the denizens in walking safely, always to the side. swaying gently above, but not against these rectangles of man-made stability and direction, are innumerable trailing droplets of lush green life. vines infinitely smaller than the once clear pipes terminating in never been white buckets, each lain in moldy snaking rows: clogging the bronchial tubes of the city, leaving her diurnally begging for clarity. greyscale gestates with the summer heat, swelling the corrugated passageways with hand-sewn nylon attempts at protection, the rhythmic ballooning and contracting, dampened unskilled hands running up and down, the sweat of the uninitiated streaming quicker.